Remembering Jennie Moore

Sinclair, Jeanie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9823-7235 and Aaron, Nic (2025) Remembering Jennie Moore. In: New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloomsbury, United Kingdom. ISBN 9781350419568 (In Press)

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Abstract / Summary

This chapter explores the methodological challenges and concerns connected to researching the story of Jennie Moore, who lived as a trans woman in the North East of England in the early twentieth century. We consider and address questions and challenges around how we can talk about Jennie’s life and gender non-conformity without using language that is anachronistic, or imposes contemporary ideas of identity on the past, yet still enables us to talk about her as a trans ancestor in ways that are relevant to trans lives in the present. As a research project that emerged as a collaboration with performance artist Tom Marshman, we consider the contributions of taking multidisciplinary approaches to remembrance and storytelling. We examine the ways in which language is used to construct narratives about historic gender non-conforming lives, particularly when Jennie’s voice is absent, and the only sources that are available about her life are transphobic and transmisogynistic newspaper reports or criminal records. We look at the ways these sources embody Jennie, and attempt to identify and disentangle her agency from within the materials available. We assert the importance of this necessarily messy work. We argue that we can learn from the continuities and discontinuities of trans experiences of incarceration in present struggles to dismantle harmful carceral structures.

Item Type:	Book Section
ISBN:	9781350419568
Subjects:	Art History & Theory History, Geography & Environment Social Sciences
Courses by Department:	The Falmouth School of Art
Depositing User:	Jeanie Sinclair
Date Deposited:	19 Mar 2025 09:59
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2025 09:59
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/5813

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